Even in those cases in which the physician feels it to be almost certain that the final issue will be a fatal one, it is not proper to give up wholly the idea of recovery, in his conversations with the patient or with his friends. This remark must not be understood to apply to those cases in which the evidence of approaching death is not to be mistaken, and so far as human wisdom can see it is absolutely certain that the patient will die. At the same time it is to be remembered that there are occasionally recoveries when death was confidently expected, and we must avoid being too ready to decide that there is no ground of hope, especially in cases of an acute disease. I will relate a case in point. A physician was called in great haste to a patient upon whom he had been attending with deep anxiety. He found the family and the friends assembled around the bed of the patient weeping over him as a dying man. The physician himself thought from his appearance that he was really dying. Still he did not _know_ that he was, and as he might possibly be in a condition from which he could be revived, he prepared a cordial at once, and with the look of hope and uttering the words of hope, he administered it. The patient not only revived but recovered. In his convalescence he told the physician that as he lay there dimly seeing with his glazed eyes the sad countenances of his friends, and feeling the oppressive languor of death, as he supposed, upon him, and panting for some cordial and for the pure air of heaven, and yet unable to speak or even to raise the hand, no words could express the relief which he at once felt, spreading a genial glow over his benumbed body, when he heard his cheerful voice speak of hope, and it seemed to him that this had more influence in reviving him than the cordial which he administered. Strong as this case is, similar cases are in the recollection of every physician who has been in practice for any considerable length of time. And they cannot be distinguished from some other cases in which attempts to revive the sinking powers fail, and the patient dies. Now it will not be claimed that the physician does wrong in uttering the language of hope in the case of those who recover; and he certainly should not be reproached for uttering the same language in the case of those who appear just as likely to recover, but for some reason hidden from human wisdom do not. Just as he would administer the cordial to all of them, so also should he apply to all of them the cordial influence of hope. The same rule is applicable to both the mental and the physical remedy.